Thai mother fights for daughter's memory

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Ratree Kongwatmai survived a tsunami, and that knowledge gives
her the strength to fight a new storm that is tearing at her
life.

On December 27, a day after the tsunami swept Thailand's Andaman
Coast, Mrs Ratree returned to the small fishing village of Laem Pom
to search for her eight-year-old daughter. Her village, just 50
metres from the water, was gone. The debris-strewn land was fenced,
a "no entry" sign posted, and hired guards stood watch.

"I lost six beloved ones. And the money baron didn't let me
enter this land," she said. "I begged them and told them that I
just want to find my daughter's dead body but they didn't let
me."

For three years, the tiny fishing community has been fighting
the "money baron" - a large, politically connected Thai company
whose representatives appeared in 2002 to lay claim to a former
mining site where villagers had lived for more than 40 years.

The story of land grabs and evictions in Laem Pom is echoed in
more than 30 villages across Thailand's six tsunami-hit provinces,
according to the Coalition Network for Andaman Coastal Community
Support.

For Mrs Ratree, the guards' refusal to let her search for her
daughter, Tannipa, sparked an anger that still burns.

She carries two photographs of her daughter. One is of a smiling
bespectacled schoolgirl, the other of a decaying, naked child's
corpse.

When she finally claimed her daughter's body in Yan Yao temple
mortuary 10 days after the tsunami, it took dental records to
identify her.

Before the tsunami she had let others in the village lead the
fight against the money baron. There were shootings, death threats
and 10 houses bulldozed during the campaign of intimidation, she
said. In 2003, the money baron sued 50 villagers to evict them. The
case is continuing.

"If anyone tries to act against them, they'll get rid of them.
Me, at that time, was scared of the dark power (illegal means) and
didn't dare to act against them," she said through a translator. At
least 18 activists, many of them fighting big developments, have
been killed or have disappeared in Thailand since 2001.

But while Mrs Ratree is still scared of the money baron, she is
now prepared to fight. Her rage for the loss of her daughter drives
her on.

"When I am here I feel warm, like my dad's still here, my
daughter's still here, my brother and sister are still here. You
know, I am not scared of the ghosts. I want to live here," she
said.

After two months of grieving, living in temporary accommodation
in nearby Ban Muang, she realised no one was going to help them
reclaim their land.

"You know, the thing is all about the power of the money baron.
. .a person like me goes to ask anybody to help, I never get any
attention at all," she said.

The Laem Pom villagers were inspired by the Moken sea gypsies
who refused, despite government pressure, to be moved to inland
concrete-box houses. Instead, they went back and began to
rebuild.

They saw that a little community, if united, could stand up and
be heard.

So, on February 26, 32 villagers gathered their meagre
belongings and walked back down the dirt track to their beach-front
land at Laem Pom. They pitched tents and marked out the area where
their homes had once stood. Rough house frames are slowly
appearing.

"Now, our project is to build 32 houses. We'll finish them and
move in together. And we're going to rebuild our houses on our old
land so that we have a house number, electricity and telephone,"
Mrs Ratree said.

The money baron, faced with a defiant community, went to the
police, but was told the courts must decide the matter. The court
sent an officer to measure the contested land on Thursday.

"The first tsunami took everything, my house and my beloved
ones," Mrs Ratree said. "The second tsunami is money baron. I want
the Thai Government to look at us and give us some help on our land
to end this story so that we don't need to fight."

· HOMELESS survivors in India's tsunami-hit Andaman
Islands are angry over Government plans to house them in makeshift
tin shelters, saying they will roast in the equatorial heat.

"These houses are being built on lands where the army has cut
down the trees to make room for the shelters and they are like
ovens," Goodheart, a Nicobarese tribesman, told reporters on
Katchal.

More than 90 per cent of the 5312 population on Katchal are
listed as dead or missing.